Max Steiner

Maximillian Raoul Walter Steiner was born in Vienna on May 10, 1888. Max was the grandson of the musical impresario who discovered Strauss and brought Offenbach to Vienna. By the time he was 16 he was already conducting, composing, and continuing his studies under Gustav Mahler. With the outbreak of the World War I, Steiner emigrated to America, where he kept busy with Broadway musicals and operettas.

One of his most beneficial American jobs was to compose the music to be conducted during screenings of the silent film The Bondman (1915); he became a friend of William Fox, the film's producer, giving Steiner early entree into the Hollywood that would so gainfully employ him in later years. It was at RKO Pictures that Max developed his style of writing scores for films. Adapting the concept developed by Richard Wagner, Max wrote music that became a dramatic content of the film, not just a background filler. His films Symphony of Six Million, King Kong, and The Informer were examples of the Leitmotif style of music he became so very famous for. While his critics referred to this style of music as "Mickey Mousing" the producers and directors loved his music. They could count on the fact that Steiner would make a good film better and great film superb. Shortly after being let go by RKO he was hired by David O. Selznick to begin work on the classic Gone with the Wind. From there he was hired by Warner Bros. where he remained for the majority of his working days. One of his first assignments was a film Tovarich part of which became the famous Warner Bros fanfare introduction to their films.

Max in his career produced scores for over 250 films! He received 26 nominations from the Academy and took home three Oscars.

After many years of suffering from cancer and failing eyesight Max Steiner passed away in Hollywood on December 28, 1971.

Notable scores By Max Steiner include:

• The Bondman (1916)
• Dixiana (1930)
• Cimarron (1931)
• The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
• A Bill of Divorcement (1932) -- Katherine Hepburn's first movie
• The Penguin Pool Murder (1932) -- A Hildegard Withers mystery
• The Monkey's Paw (1933)
• King Kong (1933)
• Morning Glory (1933)
• Little Women (1933) -- The Katherine Hepburn version
• The Son of Kong (1933)
• The Lost Patrol (1934) -- Directed by John Ford
• Of Human Bondage (1934)
• The Age of Innocence (1934)
• The Gay Divorcee (1934) -- A Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical
• The Little Minister (1934)
• The Informer (1935) -- A powerful John Ford film about "the Troubles" in Oireland
• She (1935)
• The Three Musketeers (1935)
• Follow the Fleet (1936) -- A Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical
• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)
• The Garden of Allah (1936)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) -- In which Errol Flynn does not get the girl
• The Life of Emile Zola (1937) -- A Paul Muni Biopic
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
• Jezebel (1938) -- Bette Davis's attempt to play Scarlett O'Hara
• Four Daughters (1938) -- A wildly popular Warner Bros. Chick Flick
• Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) -- The return of the "Dead End Kids" (aka "the Bowery Boys); famous as the film in which Jimmy Cagney "dies yellow"
• The Dawn Patrol (1938) -- Where Snoopy got the World War I flying ace idea
• They Made Me a Criminal (1939) -- A Busby Berkeley-directed remake of The Life of Jimmy Dolan; you can catch strains of Steiner's developing GWTW score
• Dodge City (1939) -- An Errol Flynn Western
• Dark Victory (1939) -- A Bette Davis weepie
• Gone with the Wind (1939)
• Four Wives (1939) -- Sequel to Four Daughters
• Virginia City (1940) -- An Errol Flynn Western
• The Letter (1940) -- A Bette Davis melodrama, which supposedly gave her the Signature Line "Petah, I know you have the lettah."
• Santa Fe Trail (1940) -- Errol Flynn plays J.E.B. Stuart; Ronald Reagan plays George Armstrong Custer
• Sergeant York (1941) -- Gary Cooper wins World War I
• They Died with Their Boots On (1941) -- Errol Flynn's turn to play Custer
• Now, Voyager (1942)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Mission to Moscow (1943) -- Probably the most blatant pro-Soviet propaganda ever to be produced by a major American studio
• This Is the Army (1943) -- A war-time musical extravaganza, largely featuring the songs of Irving Berlin
• Watch on the Rhine (1943)
• Passage to Marseilles (1944) -- An attempt to repeat Casablanca
• The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
• Since You Went Away (1944)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) -- What happens when Frank Capra directs a Black Comedy
• The Corn Is Green (1945)
• Mildred Pierce (1945) -- A superior Joan Crawford melodrama
• The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)
• Life with Father (1947) -- A hilariously nostalgic look back at a New York family in the 1880's
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
• Key Largo (1948)
• Adventures of Don Juan (1948) -- Errol Flynn cast against type as the legendary romantic adventurer
• The Fountainhead (1949) -- Gary Cooper plays Ayn Rand's hero
• White Heat (1949) -- "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"
• The Caine Mutiny (1954)
• The Jazz Singer (1952) -- Starring Danny Thomas in the Jolson role. The world's second most unnecessary remake, right next to the 1980 Neil Diamond version.
• Jim Thorpe -- All-American (1951)
• On Moonlight Bay (1951)
• The Glass Menagerie (1950)
• Young Man with a Horn (1950) -- Kirk Douglas plays the trumpet. No, really.
• King Richard and the Crusaders (1954) -- In which Richard the Lion Heart becomes a major Deadpan Snarker and Saladin becomes Rex Harrison; based loosely on Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman
• The Searchers (1956) John Ford's masterpiece, and perhaps the greatest Western ever made
• John Paul Jones (1959)
• A Summer Place (1959) -- One of his most popular scores, quoted constantly in later works to evoke The Fifties
• The FBI Story (1959)
• Hawaiian Eye (1959-1963) -- (Live Action TV)
• Spencer's Mountain (1963)
• A Distant Trumpet (1964)
• Youngblood Hawke (1964)
• Two on a Guillotine (1965)
• Those Calloways (1965)